By Your Side
by psquare
Summary: Set season 7. For some reason Sam gets his psychic powers back... but rather than Sam controlling them, Lucifer seems to be able to.


_**A/N:**_ Written for **ravelqueen**'s awesome prompt at the latestcomment-fic meme at **ohsam** on LJ: "For some reason Sam gets his psychic powers back... but rather than Sam controlling them, Lucifer seems to be able to."

**Warnings: **SPOILERS for s7 until 7.07: _The Mentalists_. Weirdness, present-tense, metaphor-abuse, punctuation-abuse.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Supernatural _or any of its characters.**  
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_**By Your**** Side**_

"I don't know what you're talking about," the woman says.

"She's lying," Lucifer whispers in his ear. "You know she is."

Sam squares his jaw. "Ma'am, are you sure you didn't see your husband that night? Just before he died?"

Dean elbows him, his eyes screaming _what the hell, man, drop it already_, but Lucifer says she's lying, and Lucifer-well, as much as Sam hates to admit it, he wouldn't have survived that week away from Dean as well as he did if it were not for Lucifer. It's fucked-up, but as it turns out, even he can't run away from two things at the same time.

(_i may be a hallucination, sam_, lucifer said, smooth and slow, _but you know what? it turns out that i'm the more trustworthy companion_. and he smiled, soft and gentle, and and and - sam wasn't falling for it. he wasn't, he wasn't.)

"I didn't," the woman says confidently. "I-"

Lucifer's sidled up to her, says, "Tell the truth, now," and his voice echoes eerily.

The woman blinks, her expression goes flat, and she says mechanically, "I killed him. He said he was going to divorce me, going to marry some pretty young thing in his office, and I grabbed the butcher knife and I slit his throat."

Lucifer smiles at him. "Well, that wasn't so hard, was it."

Sam turns to his brother in triumph, but Dean only looks scared.

* * *

><p>Sam is coping wonderfully well.<p>

As he figures it, in a world full of the uncertain, Lucifer is his one constant. He tried for weeks to ignore him, to press on that crescent of scar tissue on his palm even though it didn't hurt anymore, to focus building on _stone number one_, because Dean said it, Dean was _there_, and Sam could, Sam could.

And then Dean _wasn't_, and Sam stopped ignoring and started accepting.

(_up you go_, lucifer said, hooking an arm under sam's shoulder and lifting him up. sam almost fell again, blood dripping onto the forest floor, but lucifer had him. lucifer dragged him to the car, drove him back to the motel, wiped the blood under his nose, and put him to bed. _thank you, dean_, sam whispered, and fell asleep.)

Sam reaches out with one arm and Lucifer hands him his coffee mug.

Dean looks up from the paper he's reading, eyebrows almost disappearing into his hairline.

Sam pinches his nose against the ever-present bleed and smiles at his brother.

* * *

><p>They're hunting a werewolf in Wisconsin the next week when it happens again.<p>

The monster knocks Sam aside and has Dean pinned beneath its claws. It's when Dean starts screaming that Sam sees red, adrenaline coursing through him like a fucking tidal wave. He springs to his feet, and-

Lucifer's already beaten him there.

He merely touches the werewolf. It goes rigid, back arching and eyes rolling, before it collapses face-first. Dean rolls out of the way, and the werewolf - now a man, a boy, maybe sixteen years old - lies unmoving. Lucifer looks at his hands, gives a low whistle. "Just stopped its heart." He nods, impressed. "Now that was interesting, wasn't it?"

Sam doesn't waste time thanking him. He rushes to Dean's side, but Dean only flinches away from his touch.

* * *

><p>(they watched the sunset. it was probably stupid, but sam revelled in the moment: sitting on the hood of his stolen car, watching the sun sink beneath a sky streaked with red and gold, his collar turned against a cool breeze.<p>

an eternity of suffering in the depths of hell, and this moment, quiet and still and beautiful: somehow, sam is glad to have shared them both with him.)

* * *

><p>"Sam, you're scaring me, man," Dean says. He <em>does<em>look scared, his eyes wide and green and slightly wet. "You have to tell me what's going on."

"I'm fine, Dean," Sam says automatically.

"Oh, _more_than fine," Lucifer adds from across the room, and Sam smiles at him.

Dean sighs, shakes his head. "You think I haven't noticed the things you're doing now? The constant nose-bleeds? Sam, you can't pretend everything's _fine_ when it _isn't_. I thought you-we'd gone past all of this."

Sam's nonplussed. He's not lying - he _is_fine, better than he's been in a long, long while. He knows it'll take time for Dean to understand - he admits to not understanding it entirely, himself - but he knows he's telling the truth. In his own fucked-up way, he's doing okay.

Besides, he isn't sure if Dean will even _want_to understand.

"I know," Sam says. "Like I said, I'm _dealing_."

Dean opens his mouth, furious, but instead just grabs his jacket and car keys and stalks toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Sam calls after him.

"Out," Dean says shortly, and slams the door shut behind him.

"Well," Lucifer says, voice resounding in the silence that follows, "At least _that's_familiar."

Sam can't help but agree.

* * *

><p>(sam felt a hand gently stroking his hair, the sensation soothing even as his head throbbed dully. he turned his head into the touch, wanting to make the moment last for as long as it could, because dean wasn't ever really touchy-feely anymore, hadn't been for a while-<p>

he opened his eyes, and lucifer smiled at him.

sam smiled back. _thank you_, he said.)

_**Finis**_


End file.
